Goldfinger

Last night I was watching the 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger, directed by Guy Hamilton and based on the novel by Ian Fleming. After foiling a drugs cartel in Mexico, James Bond (played by Sean Connery) is assigned to keep an eye on sinister billionaire Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) who is believed to be head of an international gold smuggling operation. However Goldfinger, assisted by his hulking karate expert henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata) and interestingly named pilot Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) has more in mind than smuggling. It's possibly the most famous of the James Bond film, and is still fantastically entertaining despite seeming very dated by modern standards. It's very fast-moving and packed with action and humour. Apparently the name and personality of Goldfinger was taken from Ian Fleming's neighbour (who Fleming apparently hated). The real Goldfinger threatened to sue so Fleming offered to change the name and the title to "Goldprick", Goldfinger backed down and was fated, after the release of the film, to be plagued by prank phone calls for the rest of his life from people singing the film's theme song or doing James Bond impressions. To be honest I think that, as good as some of the later Bonds were, Sean Connery is still really the original and best.

Today was quiet. I went to my parent's house and on the way stopped off to get some groceries. I got today's issue of The Times, which was giving away a book containing two James Bond short stories by Ian Fleming (Octopussy and 007 in New York).

When I got home I watched an interesting episode of Doctor Who which was set in 1926 and involved Agatha Christie and a giant wasp. I've never read any of the Agatha Christie novels, but I remember I used to really enjoy the TV adaptations, when I was younger.

Mirror

Last night I was watching a Russian film from 1975 called Mirror, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The film is a virtually plotless portrait of three generations of a Russian family. It is loosely autobiographical and merges past and present, childhood memories, semi-documentary elements, contemporary scenes and dreamlike fantasy. As with most Tarkovsky films this features astonishingly beautiful images, shot in long languid takes. The film was very much a family affair featuring Tarkovsky's wife and his mother as actors, as well as his father Arseny Tarkovsky, an acclaimed poet, who reads his own poetry on the soundtrack. If you let yourself go with the film it provides an astonishingly beautiful and genuinely haunting viewing experience.

Today I went out and renewed my Ridacard bus pass for another month. I also bought a gift voucher for my brother's birthday at the end of this month, and a card. My brother lives in London so we usually just give each other gift vouchers as gift, because we never know what else to get. On my way home I stopped off and got my groceries for the week. Among my groceries I got today's copy of The Guardian newspaper, which was giving away a free DVD of the original Godzilla.

This afternoon I was watching Godzilla, a 1954 Japanese film directed by Ishiro Honda. The film opens with the mysterious disappearances of several ships in the same area of the ocean. The disappearances are initially blamed on mines or undersea volcanos. However, when a research team visit a nearby island they soon discover the real source of the disappearances: A giant prehistoric monster, with a fiery breath, which the islanders named Godzilla, and which lives undersea but has been awakened by recent H-bomb tests and is now on the rampage. It's not long before he's headed for Tokyo, determined to stomp the city and eat the trains. The film was hugely successful in it's day, spawning endless sequels, cartoon shows and a big-budget Hollywood re-make. The film has a strong anti-nuclear message and is much darker than a lot of the later films, with a lot of emphasis on the death and devastation that the creature causes. The Japanese name for the film and the monster is "Gojira" (a combination of the words "gorilla" and "kujira" the Japanese word for "whale"), because the original conception for the creature was apparently to be a cross between a gorilla and a whale.

I was also watching a very good episode of Doctor Who this evening.

Screenplays

Last night I was watching The Simpsons Movie, directed by David Silverman, and based on the hugely popular TV show. In the movie Homer Simpson (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) gets a new pet pig, and accidentally causes an environmental disaster (by dumping a silo full of pig crap into the town's already polluted lake) which threatens to destroy the town of Springfield. On it's relelase the film was criticised for basically being an extended episode of the series, which it does feel like, but it works well, and most importantly it is very funny.

I also watched Omen IV: The Awakening, a 1991 TV movie directed by Jorge Montesi and Dominique Othenin-Girard. The film revolves around a young couple who adopt a baby girl. As the husband pursues his political ambitions, his wife becomes increasingly concerned about the strange and violent events that seem to surround the child as she gets older. Basically it's a virtual re-make of the original Omen except with a girl. Also, because it was made for television, there are very few real scares. A ludicrous highlight comes when the private detective hired to track down the girl's real parents is pursued down an alley by a choir of demons (who basically look like zombies from a heavy metal video) who scare him by singing the Omen theme tune to him.

I went to my parent's house today for lunch. The latest issue of Sight and Sound had arrived during the week and so had a selection of five free movie screenplays that my mum had ordered for me from The Times. The scripts were: The Queen by Peter Morgan, Billy Elliot by Lee Hall, Shakespeare in Love by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, Trainspotting by John Hodge and The Hours by David Hare. So that was really good!

Not After Midnight

Last night I was reading a short story called "Not After Midnight" by Daphne du Maurier, in which a lonely schoolteacher from England goes on holiday to Crete to do some painting. He soon discovers that the last person who rented his chalet died in unusual circumstamces a couple of weeks earlier, and that he had some connection with a mysterious American couple who are renting the chalet next door, he soon finds himself reluctantly drawn into the mystery and very quickly comes to regret it. It was a pretty effective story.

Today I went out to the sales and bought The Simpsons Movie and a box-set of all five movies in The Omen series for £15, and a volume of the first two books in the 'Discworld' series by Terry Pratchett (The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic), so that was really good. I bought my groceries on my way home and also got today's copy of The Guardian which had a free CD of poets reading their own work (the poets included on the CD are Siegfried Sassoon, WH Auden, TS Eliot, Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney).

Back home I watched a movie on TV called Strangers on a Train, a 1951 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, from a novel by Patricia Highsmith with a screenplay co-written by famous crime writer Raymond Chandler. The film concerns two men, successful tennis player Guy Haines (played by Farley Granger) and wealthy playboy Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), who meet for the first time on a train. It turns out that Guy's estranged wife is refusing to divorce him so he can marry his girlfriend, while Bruno hates his father, and so Bruno proposes that they 'swap murders', basically he will kill Guy's wife and Guy will kill Bruno's father, so there's nothing to connect them. Guy refuses. However, Bruno dosen't take the hint and murders Guy's wife at a fairground. Guy is immediately the prime suspect, and Bruno soon starts trying to make him fulfill his part of the bargain. It's a good film, which is pretty suspenseful and does have some really effective set-pieces in it.

End of the Week

I set off for work early again today. On the way I stopped off for the latest issue of Radio Times and The Guardian for the Great Poets of the 20th Century booklet (which today focussed on Philip Larkin).

Work was pretty much the same as usual, and as usual for a Friday there was hardly anyone in. One good thing is that I have next Friday and the following Monday off. So I'll have a four day weekend next week.

As I was walking home I had only got half way there when it started to rain really heavily, so I ended up getting pretty wet.

Don't Look Now

Last night I was reading a short story called "Don't Look Now" by Daphne du Maurier. It concerned an English couple who take a holiday in Venice to help them get over the death of their daughter. While they are there they encounter a couple of elderly Scottish sisters whi tell the wife that they can see the ghost of her daughter and that she is happy. For the first time, the wife manages to feel comforted and happy, but the husband refuses to let himself believe it. When his wife has to travel back to England, the husband finds himself stranded in Venice, which is being plagued by a serial killer. He starts to see glimpses of what he believes to be a young girl in distress, and decides to go and help. Which turns out to be a big mistake. The story is pretty creepy and unsettling. It was adapted, fairly faithfully into a film, directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.

I also watched the final episode of The Worlds of Fantasy which dealt with role of fantasy in the modern world, and dealt with the work of authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and film-maker Guillermo Del Toro. It was very interesting, and it's a pity that the show is the last in the series. I also had a reply from Michele who thanked me for my text message and said that she had had a great day.

On my way into work I got The Independent for the Great Poets booklet which today focussed on William Blake, along with Christopher Smart and Thomas Gray, and The Guardian for the Great Poets of the 20th Century which had a booklet about one of my favourite poets, Sylvia Plath.

I also got the comments from my evening class tutor for the individual tuition. here are some of the comments:
" There's much here that is skilful and eye-catching.
You are good at creating believable and convincing atmosphere. You can cast a spell over the reader and get him/her to relax into your story-telling.
Plotting is a strong point also. And in this piece your dialogue is generally very naturalistic.
Carry on with your story-telling because you have a great fluency and imagination."
So that was nice. She did say I needed to tighten up my prose a little, and that it ended too abruptly, but then it was only an extract from the beginning of something much longer.

I walked home after work today, for a change. It only took me about ten minutes longer than it would on the bus.

Evening Class

On my way into work today I bought a roast chicken and salad sandwich and today's copy of The Independent for today's Great Poets booklet which was about Alexander Pope (or should have been but for some reason my copy of the paper didn't have the booklet in it, which was annoying). I also bought a copy of The Guardian because that was also featuring a free booklet, this time on Great Poets of the 20th Century (today's booklet was about WH Auden).

Work was pretty much the same as usual. After work I went along to my evening class. We were reading our attempts at so-called "flash fiction" from last week (flash fiction is a story written in under 150 words), as well as our longer pieces. Apparently a couple of people didn't like my story because it was deemed as being "too scary". I didn't get to have the individual tuition tonight because the class overran. However the tutor said that she would e-mail her comments.

After the class I went to the Beanscene coffee shop to get a mocha before heading back. Today was also Michele's birthday, so I sent her a text message to wish her happy birthday, even though I've not seen her for ages. As I was walking home, I saw this large brown rat run across the pavement and cross at the lights, almost frightening the life out of some poor girl on a bike.

Back home I've been watching a repeat of Red Dwarf, it was one of my personal favourite episodes, where they hit on a plan to increase the intelligence of the ship's computer at the cost of drastically reducing her lifespan. However there is a miscalculation and the computer's intelligence is increased to an IQ of 12000 but her lifespan is reduced to under four minutes, and so she switchs herself off. The crew have to survive on a spaceship with no power, and an outer space phenomena starts causing time to go haywire. It was a pretty funny episode.

Start of Another Week

Last night I was watching a couple of episodes of Tales of the Unexpected, the first one was about a doctor who is distraught when his beautiful wife leads him and then later turns up as a hit-and-run victim, but it soon turns out that things are not what they seem. The second one was about a successful English novelist doing a publicity tour in New York where he begins to be plagued by abusive phone calls threatening his life. Both of them were kind of disappointing with fairly predictable twists.

Today has been fairly quiet. Mostly it was a fairly average day at work. I left at around quarter past six and on my way home I bought a copy of The Independent for the latest in the Great Poets series (today the booklet discussed John Donne, Ben Johnson, George Herbert and Andrew Marvell).

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Last night was fairly quiet. I spent most of the time watching TV, but there wasn't really much on worth watching.

Today I went along to my parent's house for my lunch (which was salmon, potatoes and peas, followed by vanilla ice cream covered with a kind of red wine). The new issue of Fortean Times had arrived during the week, so that's always fun to read. I also managed to get the latest in the Great Poets series from The Independent, today it was the turn of William Shakespeare. It also discussed a number of other Elizabethan poets (Sir Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser and Christopher Marlowe). My parents are busy with a major redecoration project at the moment. So it has been a fairly quiet day.

At The Movies

Last night I was watching a film on television called Naked, a 1993 film directed by Mike Leigh, about the uglier side of urban Britain in the 1990s. The film opens with Johnny (played by David Thewlis) fleeing Manchester to London, after comitting a violent crime. He heads off to hide out at the flat of his ex-girlfriend, Louise (Lesley Sharp), but wastes no time in seducing her flatmate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge). Louise very quickly gets sick of him and throws him out, and so Johnny takes to wandering the London streets, encountering various other characters whom he regales with his witty, intelligent but bitterly cynical rants about life and philosophy. It's quite a long film, and very talky. The film was almost entirely improvised over an eleven week rehearsal period (the original script was just 25 pages long). The film is intelligent, very bleak, quite brutal and at times very funny and surprisingly compassionate. David Thewlis turns in a superb performance, making an utterly repulsive character weirdly sympathetic, if never actually likeable.

I got a letter today telling me that I do not have to appear as a witness in court later this month as the case has been adjourned. I don't know whether it has been cancelled outright or if it has just been delayed. I daresay I'll find out soon enough, though.When I got my groceries today I got a copy of The Independent newspaper because they are giving away a booklet every day for the next two weeks about The Great Poets. Today was Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote The Canterbury Tales.

This afternoon I went up to the Cineworld cinema and saw Diary of the Dead, directed by George A. Romero, the fifth in his series of zombie films which started with Night of the Living Dead in 1968. In this film a group of university film student are making a bad horror about a Mummy when they find themselves under attack when the bodies of the dead start coming back to life to kill and eat the living. The film itself purports to be a spur of the moment documentary they are shooting about what's happening around them, as they attempt to find help and safety. There is a lot of social commentary in the film which at times breaks up the momentum, but it was still good, being very suspenseful, gruesome and at times very funny.

After the film I went for a drink before going back in to see There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film is set in the early years of the 20th century and tells the story of Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis), a silver miner who decides to seek his fortune in oil mining. After he manages to become fairly wealthy in oil, he finds out about a massive oil deposit underneath the small town of Little Boston in California. However he soon comes into conflict with the local preacher (Paul Dano). It's a truly epic film and has a great performance from Daniel Day-Lewis (who won the Best Actor Oscar for this film). I think it atually deserved to win more than it did, although i know that it was nominated for a lot of Oscars.

After that film I went back to the bar and had a burger with chips, onion rings and coleslaw and a pint of beer, so that was nice.

Start of the Week

My Mum had given me a week's worth of subscription coupons for The Times because my parents are on holiday and can't use them, so I went out and tried three newsagents and not one of them would accept the coupons, which was extremely annoying.

This afternoon we had the supposedly regular team meetings (they are supposed to be monthly but in reality they only happen maybe twice a year or so). Apparently the computer systems that were supposed to be installed by October have been put off, until about 2012, if ever.

Slow Sunday

Last night was fairly quiet. I watched some of my new DVD. They hold up pretty well for the most part, although allowances have to be made for the fact that the shows are over fifty years old, were recorded live and feature barely any special effects or anything like that. It's interestign to think that in their day they were considered so disturbing that there were warnings before the shows saying that they were "unsuitable for children or those of you who have a nervous disposition", but now they are considered as disturbing as Disney films.

Today was fairly quiet as well, so far. I went out to renew my bus pass, but most of the travel shops were closed on Sundays so I got a copy of The Sunday Times and went to Costa Coffee for a chocolate muffin and a mocha before heading back home.